ABSTRACT
Coding and classification systems have a long history in medicine. Current systems cantrace their origins back to epidemiological lists of the causes of death from the early part of the eighteenth century. François Bossier de Lacroix (1706-1777) is commonly credited with the first attempt to classify diseases systematically (WHO ICD-10, 1993). Better known as Sauvages, he published the work under the title Nosologia Methodica.
